


Sniffly Morning in Barcelona

by Jenny33Wren



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8884003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenny33Wren/pseuds/Jenny33Wren
Summary: I was asked to write a Sick!fic with Yuuri and Victor, and here's what I've got. This happens post-episode 12, but let's assume all my guesses are right.





	

The sniffling started sometime in the middle of the night. Victor had been too hopped up on adrenaline after the day’s events to sleep soundly anyway, and Yuuri’s progressive symphony of sniffles and little strangled coughs meant by the time the sun came up, they had both been silently awake for hours.

“Are you alright?” Victor asked. He ran one hand down Yuuri’s side and kissed his shoulder. Under the soft fabric of his t-shirt, Yuuri’s body was like ice.

Yuuri sat up with another combination sniffle-cough and shuddered.

“I’m fine.” His voice rasped like he’d been shouting. It was a sound Victor had hoped for, but under different circumstances. It should have been a remnant of a late night celebrating Yuuri’s Grand Prix win. Everyone else had been up for it, and Yuuri had been in high spirits for the first hour or so of the banquet. He’d blushed furiously at Chris’s teasing and held Victor’s hand through the entire cocktail hour. He hadn’t had much to drink, but Victor assumed that had just been his fiance’s efforts to keep himself from repeating the events of the previous year. Not that Victor would have minded a repeat performance, now that everything was out in the open between them but…

Yuuri pulled himself to his feet and shuffled towards the hotel room’s bathroom door. His shoulders were hunched and his hair was matted to one side. Victor watched him go and stretched. He’d been surprised when Yuuri had said he was going back to their room so soon after dinner. The dancing had barely started, and Victor was pretty sure he’d seen Otabek passing Yurio glasses of wine when the boys thought no one was watching. It was shaping up to be a fun night, but Yuuri’s face was drawn and his eyes were tired. Somewhere along the way, they’d lost the fevered glimmer that had shone from them since the moment Yuuri had stepped off the ice for the final time.

Victor had said he’d go with Yuuri. Typically, Yuuri protested that Victor should stay at the party, which more or less squashed any of Victor’s hope that Yuuri had something a little more...intimate in mind with an early exit. But it was Yuuri’s night, and as tempting as it was to stay with their friends, Victor knew that Yuuri’s brain would be a whirl of nervous what-if scenarios in the morning if he didn’t know how Victor had spent the rest of his night. Even these many months later, Yuuri’s tendency to go to the worst case over the smallest things amused and saddened Victor. He still didn’t always know how to handle it, but he was getting better.

In the bathroom, Yuuri blew his nose and let out a couple hacking coughs. He shuffled back into the bedroom and flopped down next to Victor.

“I think I’m sick,” he said. Victor curled himself around the smaller man. The months of intense training and competition had left Yuuri’s body hard and toned. On a different morning, Victor would have explored the long cords of muscle with his hands and then, later, his tongue, if Yuuri would let him. But Yuuri continued to shiver in his arms, and Victor knew this morning was not going to be that kind of morning. He pulled the hotel’s thin blankets over them both and wrapped Yuuri tight against him. Yuuri stiffened.

“I’ll get you sick too,” he said. “You should probably go find another-”

“Shhh.” Victor kissed the spot where Yuuri’s dark hair met his neck. “Get some rest.” 

##

Yuuri got worse before he got better. By lunchtime, he had gone from chilled shivering to feverish sweats. He kicked the blankets off the both of them and lay with one arm over his eyes. His t-shirt rucked up over his stomach and when Victor brushed a hand over it, the skin was hot.

“My head hurts,” Yuuri moaned.

“I have some tablets in my bag.” Victor rolled to the edge of the mattress and reached for his suitcase. Yuuri reached out with a clammy hand to grab at Victor’s arm as he rummaged around.

“I can’t,” he said.

“Do they make you sicker?” Victor asked. He was rarely sick. In fact he wasn’t even sure how long he’d had the tablets in his bag. Would they even still be safe to use? He knew when Yakov was sick, Victor’s former coach didn’t take any kind of medication. He said it made everything worse. Victor was fairly sure Yakov believed vodka healed everything anyway.

“No,” Yuuri said, sounding miserable.

“Then why not?”

Yuuri shifted so that he peeked out from under his arm with one eye.

“They might test me again,” he said. It took Victor a second to realize what he was talking about. 

“They tested you yesterday, Yuuri-kun.” As soon as they had left the kiss and cry, Yuuri had been whisked away by a starry-eyed young woman in a green volunteer’s jacket for drug testing. 

“But what if…?” Yuuri sighed and curled up around his pillow. Victor trailed a hand through Yuuri’s dark hair, feeling where his scalp was damp from the heat of the fever. He smiled sadly as he looked down at the Grand Prix champion.

“Did you take anything before the competition?” he asked. Yuuri glared up at him, his eyes sparking with hurt and anger.

“Of course not! Why would you ask that?”

Victor smiled and lay down so that they faced each other on the mattress. He wanted to pull Yuuri close again, but knew that Yuuri would need to see his face for this conversation to work.

“They only re-test if they find something, and there’s nothing to find. You won!” He squeezed Yuuri’s shoulder. “It’s no trick. No one is going to take it away from you.” A lump swelled in Victor’s throat at the memory. As Yuuri had come out of his final spin, the arena had been completely silent. Just the music and scrape of his skates on the ice. He came into his final pose, and the silence extended for a second longer. Victor could hear his own heart beating in that moment. And then it was if all the spectators inhaled on the same breath and went wild. The noise had been deafening. The floor shook under Victor’s feet.

Yuuri’s hand fisted in the sheets.

“I guess you’re right.” He didn’t meet Victor’s eyes. Victor put a hand on the back of his neck and pulled Yuuri forward until their foreheads touched. He wanted to kiss him, full on the mouth, and keep kissing him until Yuuri believed him, but Yuuri’s warm body against his reminded him how very sick he actually was, and in the end it would do neither of them any good if Victor was bedridden in the next few days too.

“How many times have I won?” He didn’t like to bring it up around Yuuri. It was so hard for Yuuri to believe that anything good had happened. To remind him of Victor’s past successes just made him feel like there was still more he had to live up to. But Victor needed Yuuri to take the medication. He seemed to be getting warmer all the time, and that couldn’t be good.

“Five,” Yuuri said.

“Five times,” Victor said. “And they never tested me twice at any event. Anyone who was there yesterday knows why you won.” 

Yuuri pressed closer, burrowing against Victor as if he wasn’t giving off heat like a hot spring in winter. Victor held onto him, stroking along his spine and waiting. Sometimes the trick with Yuuri was just to wait.

“Ok,” Yuuri said, and for a second Victor thought he was still agreeing with him about the drug tests just to keep it from turning into an argument, but then Yuuri rolled back and wiped at his running nose with the back of his hand. “I’ll take one,” he said.

Victor got up, poured him a glass of water, and talked him into taking two tablets. There was a fine sheen of perspiration around Yuuri’s forehead and his face was flushed. He took the two pills and drank the whole glass of water. He sniffled, and then coughed again before rolling back down onto the mattress and pulling the blankets over his head. Victor leaned over to pull them back just far enough to reveal the top of Yuuri’s dark hair. He pressed a kissed to it.

“I’ll go get us some food,” he said.  

##

It took longer than he’d planned to find everything he wanted. He ran into Yurio and Otabek in the hotel lobby. Yurio had looked a little green when Victor mentioned food, which told him the night before had gone exactly the way he’d thought it would. Victor made a mental note to check his social media feeds when he got back up to the room. He figured he could count on Phichit at least to post a few good pictures. If not, he was sure Chris would have some. It was unlikely that whatever Yurio had gotten up to could top Yuuri’s spectacular dance off from the year before, but it was still worth knowing. Seeing Yurio relax and enjoy himself would be a nice change.

Finding food he thought Yuuri would want to eat was tricky. If they were in Hasetsu, Victor would have just brought up katsudon, or maybe just the rice. Even if they’d been in Russia, he would have made Yurio get him more of those pirozhkis his grandfather made. In Barcelona, on a grey December afternoon, finding something easy to eat for a sick Grand Prix champion was a challenge. Victor loved Spanish food, but he didn’t think Yuuri wanted another round of cheese and cured meats. In the end, Victor bought a package of biscuits and some juice for Yuuri, and a tin of olives for himself.

Yuuri was sitting up in bed when Victor returned. He gave him a thin smile and went to speak, but was instead immediately launched into another round of coughing.

“Did you feel like this yesterday?” Victor asked as he set his bags down. Yuuri had skated the performance of his career the day before. If he’d done it while coming down with whatever he had today, that would be an even greater accomplishment.

“No,” Yuuri wheezed. He closed his eyes and took two slow breaths, but the second one just made him cough again. “Maybe. Everything about yesterday is a bit...I don’t know.”

Victor sat next to him and brushed the back of his hand over Yuuri’s cheek. His skin was cooler than it had been before, and the rosy colour to his skin had settled back to his usual complexion.

“I saw Yurio and Otabek downstairs,” he said. He fished his phone out of his pocket as he sat down next to Yuuri. He flipped open screens until he found what he was looking for, then held the phone between them so Yuuri could see too.

The pictures were exactly as Victor had hoped. Yurio even smiled in a few of them.

“Looks like his training with the ballerina paid off in more ways than one,” Yuuri said. Victor smiled, and then froze.

“Did you just make a joke?” he said. Yuuri blushed and his mouth started working silently, the way it did when he was embarrassed and trying to come up with an apology. Victor grinned and wrapped his arm around Yuuri to pull him close.

He kept scrolling through the screen. They pointed out particularly silly moments at the banquet, and some of Phichit’s peerless selfies. Victor was warm again, but it seemed like Yuuri’s fever had subsided.

Once they got through the banquet, the pictures changed. It was Yuuri’s face on the screen that caught Victor’s attention first. He stood, medal raised, and smiling dazedly at the camera, flanked by Yurio and Phichit. Phichit beamed. Yurio scowled. The perfect trio. Victor kept scrolling. There were a number of pictures posted by various newfeeds; the medal ceremonies, Yuuri waving the red and white Japanese flag over his head as he took a lap around the rink.

Beside him, Yuuri had gone still, aside from the occasional sniff. Victor turned his head and pressed a kissed to Yuuri’s forehead. He remembered his own first Grand Prix victory. He had been confident going in. Yakov had worked his training program so that Victor would peak at just the right time, and he knew that he stood a good chance against the other competitors in the field that year. Still, the whole final day of competition had been a blur until he’d found himself standing on top of the podium. He wondered how much of yesterday Yuuri really remembered.

He kept scrolling. Before the medals, there were pictures and video clips from each competitor’s routine. He bit back the twinge of sympathy at the shot of Yurio on his knees after he’d missed the landing of his quad toe loop. Victor had never once in his career rooted for a competitor to make a mistake. He had always skated to win on his own merit, and not on someone else’s errors, and he wanted the same for Yuuri. But he would be dishonest if he didn’t admit that this heart had lurched just a little in excitement the day before when Yurio had gone down.

More scrolling, and then they were at Yuuri’s program. Victor paused at a picture of the two of them, sitting in the kiss and cry, doing exactly that. Yuuri was buried in Victor’s arms, his head turned away from the camera. When the scores had come up, showing Yuuri’s personal best of the season by a wide margin, Victor had known he would be untouchable. Even Chris and Otabek with their technical strength, or Yurio’s artistry, wouldn’t be able to catch what Yuuri had left out on the ice. 

Yuuri, for his part, had seen the scores and immediately burst into tears. It had been sudden, but not entirely unexpected. Not after the disappointment of the short program. Not after their ridiculous fight afterwards as Yuuri had tried to convince Victor that he would understand if Victor didn’t want to coach him anymore. Yuuri’s tears were a culmination of the raw feeling and passion he had given to his final Grand Prix program. Victor could only gather him up in his arms and hold him as Yuuri had sobbed out everything he had put into his routine, while the cameras around them whirred and clicked. 

Victor scrolled back a little farther, and there was a video of Yuuri’s whole free skate program.

“Do you want to watch it?” Victor asked softly. Although they had used video in training to help Yuuri see where he needed to improve, it had always made Yuuri self-conscious to see himself skate. They kept the video to short clips highlighting just the bits that needed work. Victor wondered if maybe that had been a mistake, if never showing Yuuri a complete competitive performance had only furthered his lack of confidence.

Beside him, Yuuri pressed a little closer. He wrapped one arm around Victor’s mid-section, his hand sliding under Victor’s t-shirt to touch his skin.

“Yes I would,” he said. He suppressed another cough and laid his head on Victor’s shoulder. Victor thumbed over the screen and let the video run.

The feed was from a French channel, and since neither of them spoke much French, they weren’t able to follow the sportscaster’s commentary. It was probably just as well. Victor found himself drawing small circles with one finger over Yuuri’s shoulder as they watched. It wasn’t as good as being there the day before, watching Yuuri fly over the ice, but even on the phone’s small screen, his love emanated from him like something to be grabbed ahold of. Each jump was matched with greater and greater applause until the crowd was left breathless as Yuuri poured his heart out to them all.

“I don’t remember any of this,” Yuuri said softly as the screen flashed to Victor, cheering like a madman behind the boards when the music had died away. In their cozy hotel room, Victor squeezed him tight. He lifted Yuuri’s hand that flashed the thin gold band on the fourth finger. He kissed each knuckle solemnly.

“You were perfect,” he said. Yuuri sniffed against his chest, and Victor couldn’t tell if it was tears or the cold that made him do it. He set the phone down and held his fiance close. 

  
  



End file.
